APA Vs. MLA - A Writer's Guide to the Most Used Styles for Papers

MLA stands for Modern Language Association. APA stands for American Psychological Association. Both of these organizations have developed a style to aid in the formation of papers. Both styles provide guidelines for the mechanics of writing, including aspects of punctuation, quotation, and the documentation of sources. A person's profession or major affects the style used. For example, a Psychology student would use the APA style in writing his/her papers. A Biology student, however, would use the MLA style for his/her papers. Both of these styles contain many similarities as well as many differences. One similarity is the margins. All of the margins with both styles are 1".

One of the differences between the two styles involves citing references within the document. A citation is the quoting or paraphrasing of the ideas coming from someone else. This process is also known as parenthetical citation. The MLA style requires the writer, in an internal citation, to place the author's last name and page number of the reference in parenthesis. The APA style requires a different format. It requires the writer to place the author's last name, date of publication, and the page number of the reference in parenthesis.

Another difference between the MLA and APA styles occurs when citing information found on the World Wide Web. Citing information from the WWW is very important to know because so much useful information is found on the Web. The MLA style requires the writer to include the author's last name, first name, and title of the document. Then the title of the complete work, version or file number, document date or date of last revision, protocol and address, and access path or directions are found.